Overview
- Explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in theater
- Uses plays and performances to examine the public’s ongoing conflicted attitudes toward educators
- Considers the ways in which theatre artists have represented teachers within and against the political contexts
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History (PSTPH)
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About this book
This timely and accessible book explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in plays and performances primarily from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States. Examining various historical and recurring types, such as spinsters, schoolmarms, presumed sexual deviants, radicals and communists, fascists, and emasculated men teachers, Wilson shines the spotlight on both well-known and nearly-forgotten plays. The analysis draws on a range of scholars from cultural and gender studies, queer theory, and critical race discourses to consider teacher characters within notable education movements and periods of political upheaval. Richly illustrated, the book will appeal to theatre scholars and general readers as it delves into plays and performances that reflect cultural fears, desires, and fetishistic fantasies associated with educators. In the process, the scrutiny on the array of characters may help illuminate current attacks on real-life teachers while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars.
Finalist for the 2023 Freedley Award
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“Rarely do publications engage the roles of theatre scholar, historian, educator, and practitioner with so balanced an approach as does James F. Wilson’s Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in the American Theatre: Pedagogy of the Oppressors … . Educators and practitioners alike have much to learn from studying these plays … . This book smartly and effectively challenges theatremakers to think critically … and to create more honest, nuanced depictions of teachers that better represent their essential place in society.” (Collin Vorbeck, Theatre Topics, Vol. 34 (3), November, 2024)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
James F. Wilson is the Executive Officer of the Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, USA. His work has appeared in several chapter anthologies and academic journals, and he is the author of Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Race, Performance, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance (2010).
Accessibility Information
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre
Book Subtitle: Pedagogy of the Oppressors
Authors: James F. Wilson
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34013-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-34012-3Published: 25 October 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-34015-4Published: 25 October 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-34013-0Published: 24 October 2023
Series ISSN: 2947-5767
Series E-ISSN: 2947-5775
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 216
Number of Illustrations: 15 b/w illustrations
Topics: Global/International Theatre and Performance, Theatre History, Education, general, Literature, general